Smart Cities

Smart cities are locally defined with common features including resident-centric services, a focus on problems based on community needs and priorities, data-driven processes, and sensors and connectivity.

— Ed Lee, San Francisco Mayor

The world’s city-dwelling population is expected to double by 2050, creating signifcant societal challenges as well as valuable business opportunities. At the same time, consumers are demanding a higher quality customer experience driven by data and complex intelligence management behind the scenes. The Smart Cities Council brings together industry experts and startups to understand how innovators are using Smart Cities and the Internet of Things to reshape traditional industrial operations in the production, distribution, and consumption of energy, water, waste, mobility/transportation, logistics, and more.

Council lead

Will Barkis

Will Barkis, PhD, runs the Smart Cities portfolio at Orange Silicon Valley and serves as Volunteer Technology Advisor to the San Francisco Mayors' Office of Civic Innovation where he is leading the creation of a Strategic Plan for Smart Cities and the Internet of Things for the city. Formerly, he directed two innovation programs at Mozilla and worked at the National Science Foundation, where he collaborated with the White House to launch the U.S. Ignite next-generation apps initiative.